Aureve Core · 6 months · Banking & Finance
Senior Testing Specialist, Wellsfargo → Manager, EY → AVP, Citi
She had learned everything on the job — and spent years believing that made her less. It didn't. It made her extraordinary. She just needed to believe it first.
The Situation
When she came to Aureve, she was a Senior Testing Specialist at Wellsfargo — seven years into a career she had built entirely through instinct, effort, and learning by doing. She had never studied formally in her field. She had no professional certification. And every day she walked into work, that gap whispered to her: you don't really belong here.
She felt like a runner — always executing, never deciding. In meetings, she would prepare obsessively and still feel paralysed. She couldn't negotiate her salary. She couldn't claim credit for her ideas. She filled her plate with three people's worth of work and then couldn't sleep, wondering if it was enough. When praise arrived, she deflected it. When opportunities arrived, she hesitated. Burnout sat behind everything.
The self-doubt was not about skill. She had the skills. The problem was that she had never developed a self-image that matched what she could actually do.
The Work
Aureve Core began by dismantling the belief that a formal degree was the prerequisite for credibility. We traced the roots of that belief — where it came from, what it was protecting, and what it was costing her. The sessions addressed her relationship with praise, her instinct to defer, and the exhausting habit of proving herself through volume rather than visibility.
Practically, we worked on how she communicated her value — in one-on-ones, in performance conversations, and in salary negotiations. She had never asked for a raise. We rebuilt the internal story she told herself about what she deserved, and then we practised the words. We worked on what it looked and felt like to receive a compliment without immediately undermining it.
The external results came faster than either of us expected. When Wellsfargo offered her a 35% internal hike, she evaluated it — genuinely, for the first time — and decided she was worth more. She accepted an offer from EY instead: a 50% jump, and a Manager title. Less than a year later, she moved to Citi as AVP.
"Sanket's coaching style is truly unique — his expertise and empathetic approach empowered me to tap into my potential, overcome self-doubt, and develop a strong sense of self-assurance."
Senior Testing Specialist → Manager → AVP · Wellsfargo / EY / Citi
The Takeaway
The career didn't change because she learned new skills. It changed because she stopped apologising for the ones she had. The 50% salary jump was not a negotiation win — it was a belief win. When she finally trusted that she was worth more, the market agreed. The Aureve approach treats self-worth as a career asset, not a soft concept. In her case, it was the most leveraged asset she owned.
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